Your ShelfYour Projects

BEHIND THE TIMES

17%

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 27, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 32, No. 18.

Read the full edition

BEHIND THE TIMES.

By Editor

We are accused of being behind the times. We receive the charge with the utmost composure considering the source from which it comes. A late Banner of Light quotes from the Youth’s Department of the REVIEW, the following lines, making thereon the accompanying remarks:
“One who does not occasionally read the religious papers can hardly conceive how far behind the intelligence of the age these people drag along. It is interesting to occasionally look them up as a curiosity. We cut the following lines from the ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH HERALD:
THOU GOD SEEST ME. Among the deepest shades of night, Can there be one who sees my way? Yes; God is as a shining light, That turns the darkness into day. When every eye around me sleeps, May I not sin without control? No; for a constant watch he keeps On every thought of every soul. If I could find some cave unknown, Where human feet have never trod, Yet there I could not be alone— On every side there would be God. But I must flee; he tells me where; To Jesus Christ he bids me fly; And while I seek for pardon there, There’s only mercy in his eye.
“Who ever saw any god but the sun (which was a god) ‘turn the darkness into day?’ Could not God see as well in the darkness as in the light? If thoughts are sins, what is the necessity of being out of sight of other persons to sin? Could not God be in better business than watching ignorant mortals? “Flee” to Jesus Christ. Where is the place to find him and get these smiles of mercy? To us it seems nonsense.”
The participants in a noisy religious meeting once earnestly exhorted a certain individual to join them in their fervor, saying, “Come, brother, go with us.” His response was, “Where are you going? Tell me that first.” In like manner we, before we can acknowledge it to be to our discredit to be behind the times, must know what kind of times we are behind. With Spiritualists, their own principles are of course the standard. Then we have only to say that when the times demand that we deny the sovereignty of God, the accountability of man, and all distinction between right and wrong, thus opening the flood gates of immortality of every description; when to keep up with the times we must virtually deny the existence of God, and make light of the work of the Redeemer; when the times get beyond reason, revelation, and common sense, then we prefer to be behind the times. We deem it no discredit to fall behind times like these. And if men will not receive the truth, but persist in rushing on with lightning speed to perdition, all we can say is, Pass on, friends, we prefer to stay behind.